United States Presidential Candidates 1980

"I don't think Jerry Brown is committed to anything but Jerry Brown."

"I don't know who Jerry Brown is anymore. There's been so many evolvements."

"He's very ambitious and will do anything to be in power."

"I don't like to talk about Jerry Brown. I don't like him."

"He's totally into power."

"Jerry has given hypocrisy a bad name."

"Jerry is perceived by most legislators as very selfish."

"The idea that government has some omnipotence or omniscience is completely absurd and counter to all the thinking that went into our country."

"The mistrust of our public institutions and mere anxiety about our future economy are more the order than the exception. Three quarters of the people do not trust their government. More than half of the eligible citizens in California again decided not to vote in the last election. Why? Why the anti-government mood? I asked this same question four years ago and now I believe I understand. Simply put, the citizens are revolting against a decade of political leaders who righteously spoke against inflation and excessive government spending but who in practice pursued the opposite course."

"In this decade government at all levels has increased spending faster than the true rate of economic growth… The cure for inflation has been administered with a vengeance. Yet most people feel worse, not better, about their government benefactor. The elderly find their fixed income eroding in half; those about to retire fear their future pensions will never keep pace. Ten million California workers see their wages rise but not as fast as prices. Those on welfare obtain larger grants but find more expensive groceries."

"There's nothing wrong with being an anarchist."

"We are in a degenerate state of self-government. In fact, even to use the words self-government, is not only an exaggeration, it's a lie. It's a big lie!"

"I don't think you can take much of what he says seriously."

"Jerry Brown was just a nut."

"[Jerry Brown is] a desperate man."

"That man [Jerry] is like 500 pounds of Jello."

"I do not believe he believes what he is saying."

"I listened, and I've come to the conclusion I just don't trust him."

"Jerry has no political or ideological anchor."

"Oftentimes Jerry will run for an office and not want to do the things that are part of that office."

"When Proposition 13 passed overwhelmingly in California, Californians were very pleased. And they felt no pinch at all, not knowing that, thanks to Jerry Brown, there was an incredible surplus in the coffers. So life went on as it always had, with the sunshine, and orange trees, and smog-and everything sort of went on. And about a year ago, the truth had to be revealed, that the surplus had been used up. And now the cuts are taking place in services that people took for granted. That's the California way of life. And people are having to come to grips with what that means for the handicapped, the aged, the poor, the children, and the minorities."

"[Jerry Brown] is the most self-serving, inept politician that I have ever met in my 35 years in politics."

"He is by an order of magnitude the most self-absorbed politician I have ever dealt with."

"Admit it-the world is mighty wacky. Dan Quayle is a heartbeat away from bravely leading us into the New World Order. Our intelligentsia are running around declaring that we have reached both the End of History and the apex of political evolution-we're the kings of the global jungle. At the same time, sensing new opportunities, the forces of reptilian nationalism-from Pat Robertson to militant mullahs, from David Duke to the ancient reactionary movements of Eastern Europe-are crawling out from under their rocks, getting facelifts, and learning how to use teleprompters and Stinger missiles. Meanwhile, back in the cradle of democracy, the "opposition" response to all this is to offer a choice between Jerry Brown and None of the Above."

"The governor is the worst administrator ever to come down the pike."

"To be sure, Kennedy's career was scarred by his personal life. Worst of all, Kennedy was involved in a horrible accident in 1969. Early on July 18, 1969, Kennedy drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. Kennedy escaped but did not tell police about the incident until the next morning. Although Kennedy claimed that he immediately went to seek assistance, the media discovered this to be false. Kennedy's travails received massive coverage. The accident dashed any hope that he had of successfully running for president. But in his public life, Kennedy was the kind of politician who seems absent from modern politics, one who was loyal to an ideological outlook -- an ethos, as Sobchak would say -- and who devoted his career toward fighting for that cause. Many Democrats loved Kennedy for the same reason that some Republicans hated him -- he was a true believer in a political system that privileges compromise and the abandonment of principle. Kennedy was not that kind of politician and, for many Americans, that meant a lot."

"Too often, the political system seems biased toward elected officials who only care about re-election. Politicians are eager to please interest groups who contribute to their campaign funds and activist organizations who will deliver the vote. Americans suspect that a majority of politicians are willing to switch their position on any given day, depending on which way the political winds are blowing. Everyone, we sometimes fear, is a flip-flopper. This was certainly not the case with Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy. He was a refreshing presence in Washington for many Americans, even those on the right who hated the political ideas that he championed. Love him or hate him, as Walter Sobchak might say, at least Kennedy stood for something."

"When did Ted Kennedy become Jabba the Hutt? He's huge! You're a Kennedy, not a Macy's Day float!! Bring him down, we're voting! No sir, I said "no" to the Krispy Kreme!!"

"Without question, Kennedy has been the single biggest legislative champion of health care reform since the 1960s. Kennedy has continued to push for a single-payer system, criticizing Democrats, including President Clinton, who abandoned that goal."

"I think Kennedy just saw Carter as sort of a backwoods nobody who was going to be gone, you know, in a couple of months. And he really had contempt for him as having not a lot of accomplishments and not a lot of pedigree. So they were just from alien worlds. I think that played a - worlds that were alien to each other. And I think that played a lot into why they couldn't understand each other."

"Once upon a time, the country was crawling with pro-life liberals and leftists. Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, one of the period's preeminent liberal Democrats, once declared that the right to life begins at "the very moment of conception," a position he held until 1975. Further left, the Black Panther Party fiercely denounced abortion, a procedure it associated with eugenics. When New York liberalized its abortion rules in 1970, the party paper declared the change a "victory for the oppressive ruling class who will use this law to kill off Black and other oppressed people before they are born….How long do you think it will take for voluntary abortion to turn into involuntary abortion to turn into compulsory sterilization?" Like Kennedy, the Panthers didn't reverse themselves on the issue until the mid-'70s."

"Kennedy’s last words were a eulogy for his campaign. He sought to capture its essence as having upheld something bigger and greater even than politics. He cast himself in defeat as a prophetic figure whose intransigence and bullheadedness were effort to call his brothers and sisters in the party back to their faith, an attempt to redeem and redirect his wayward party and a wayward president."

"He's been around so long he knows the ins and outs of the rules. He knows how to reach out and put his arm around somebody and say, 'Can't you go along with me on this one?' He's the way the Senate used to work."

"Steel makes Robert seem less than we remember; Clymer makes Teddy more important than we may have thought."

"If this primary is about youth and genealogy, Kennedy wins. It was always going to be up to Markey to make it about something else. And so far, that hasn’t happened. That’s partly because the race was overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and then by the nationwide protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. But it’s also because Markey hasn’t really made the best case he has — his age and seniority. Or used the best example he has to make it — Ted Kennedy. Over 47 years in Washington, Ted Kennedy pushed what he called "the cause of his life," which was health care reform. One of the last things he did before his death from brain cancer at 77 was to submit the Affordable Health Choices Act, which eventually became the Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Obama."

"Ted Kennedy changed my life. He changed how I understood what a public servant does. And I think of him in this race every single day, and I come to this convention, and I think of him every single hour. And what I think about is that it is my job and it is our job to live up to what it is Senator Kennedy asked of himself, and that is, we do our work for hard-working families who are counting on us."

"Well don't throw anything now, because we're not talking about philosophy or party. The finest legislator I ever worked with was Ted Kennedy. He had a magnificent staff, he even had a parliamentarian on that staff of his. So when you were in the legislative arena and you were bringing your lunch and staying late, you wanted to get Ted on your side or least use some of his expertise. I would go to him sometimes early on and say look, you'll have to trust me, what the hell do I do right now to move this bill? Boy I'll tell you he had ways to do it and as you can see he uses those skills on issues in which I was totally on the other side. I can't remember them all there were so many. We were never on the same side. But he is a legislator."

"The end of a lengthy political career is almost invariably sad, whether the final act is defeat, infirmity, or death. Ted Kennedy and John McCain both fought valiantly in public to remain active senators despite the dire diagnosis of aggressive brain cancer. Former segregationist Strom Thurmond treated the Senate as a high-class rest home as he—barely able to recognize his surroundings—nominally served the people of South Carolina until he died in office at age 100."

"Edward M. Kennedy, despite his long career in the U.S. Senate, is still often known as Teddy, the diminutive attached to him as the youngest brother in his powerful family. The nickname persists because he was blessed and cursed by the gift of years that let him lead a full and well-publicized life that could only diminish him against the gargantuan mythology grown up around his murdered brothers John and Robert."

"And it only took about 50 years to make a film about a Democratic icon leaving a woman to die in a river. It’s amazing it was made in the first place."

"Because there are -- the majority of people on the no-fly list are oftentimes people that basically just have the same name as somebody else who don't belong on the no-fly list. The -- former Senator Kennedy -- Ted Kennedy once said he was on a no- fly list. I mean, there are -- I -- we -- there are journalists on the no-fly list. There are others involved in the no-fly list that wind up there. These are everyday Americans that have nothing to with terrorism. They wind up on the no-fly list. There's no due process or any way to get your name removed from it in a timely fashion. And now they're having their Second Amendment right being impeded upon."

"Hardly a day went by when I didn’t serve some of the most powerful people in the world. Men like Robert Byrd, Strom Thurmond, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Jesse Helms, Ted Kennedy, John Glenn and Bob Dole were with us on a regular basis."

"Most importantly, though, Chappaquiddick reminds us confirmation bias and wishful thinking aren’t unique to one side of the aisle. In the era of President Trump, media members have had fun telling Republicans that they have abandoned all of their moral principles in order to back a man whose agenda they support. But Democrats beat Republicans there by decades: They not only overlooked a man who likely committed manslaughter but also made him into a hero, the "Lion of the Senate." We can’t understand how morals and politics have been split in two without reckoning with this history."

"Clymer reconstructs with impressive and sometimes exhausting detail all the major legislative struggles Ted Kennedy has had in his nearly four decades in the Senate, whether they were winning efforts or losing battles. He recounts Kennedy's steadfast and often eloquent defense of the poor and the disadvantaged. But the description of Kennedy's failed presidential campaign in 1980 is, because the campaign itself was inept and ill considered, devastating. Here was the heir to the Kennedy political myth, the beneficiary of more loyal political talent than any other candidate in history, making a fool of himself and damaging a sitting Democratic President in the process. Ted Kennedy's personal failings, including the fatal car crash at Chappaquiddick, his flagrant womanizing and broken marriage, his excessive drinking, his enabling role in the boozy evening that led to his nephew William Kennedy Smith's trial (and acquittal) for rape--all are dealt with matter-of-factly and unsensationally, but not without judgment. Clymer describes these episodes as they were: egregious cases of irresponsible behavior that disqualified Kennedy from ever being President. But he also paints a sympathetic picture of a lonely man who finds love with his second wife Vicki."

"I know what he’s capable of — he’s capable of bigness that we didn’t see that in general election campaign that was run. I would hope that’s the path that he goes down. His political epitaph is going to be dictated by how he conducts himself in next six or 13 years. Will he be seen as a giant of the Senate who came back from a presidential loss like Scoop Jackson, Robert Taft or Ted Kennedy, or will he go down a different path? Only he can decide it."

"There was something discomforting about Carter going back 30 years plus to hear him blame Kennedy for his own administration's failure. Of course, in fairness, Kennedy -- while now revered as a saint -- was not the most sympathetic and beloved figure back in the day. Chappaquiddick aside, he was widely seen as a man with many pleasures, most of which had to do more with himself than the Senate. From the moment Carter was inaugurated in 1977, he was always seen as plotting against him; at least that was the view of many in the Carter White House. It wasn't until after his challenge to Carter's nomination in 1980 failed and after he realized that the presidency was not in the cards for him did he become a true giant of the Senate. But Carter has always been one not to forget slights. And while it's always dangerous to dabble in psycho-babble, I'm sure he had to resent the widespread view among many in the party that he only won the nomination in 1976 because Kennedy stayed out of the race, and that the nomination in 1980 was Kennedy's for the asking were the Massachusetts senator to run -- many in Congress had said that out loud, including House Speaker Tip O'Neill. That had to grate on the president. Carter, in fact, told a group of congressmen in 1979 that if Kennedy were to challenge him, "I'll whip his ass." And he did. I'm not a fan of speaking ill of the dead, but at the same time, history should not bend depending on whether the subject is alive or dead. Kennedy spent most of his last years as an American icon, and deservedly so, far removed from the joke and the playboy and the dilettante he was portrayed as during much of his early time in the Senate. You can't write honestly about Edward Moore Kennedy without both accounts."

"I worked with Ted Kennedy. He was the chairman of my committee, and I loved Ted Kennedy. But on this issue, when you have one of the large Latino organizations in America saying vote no and you have the AFL-CIO saying vote no and you have leading progressive Democrats, in fact, voting no, I don't apologize for that vote."

"But the appeal of Buchanan also marks the Democratic Party's failure to champion working people. Ever since Jimmy Carter beat out Ted Kennedy in the 1980 primaries, Democratic leaders have distanced themselves from organized labor and their constituency, those who need government to fight for their economic interests."

"Of course, that isn’t true. At all. Democrats routinely overlook powerful politicians accused of sexual misconduct, from the late Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy to former President Bill Clinton to Biden himself. It all depends on the politics of the moment. And the reality is that Cuomo was a liability for Democrats not merely because of his penchant for grabbing butts, but because his COVID-19 performance was so abysmal."

"Senator Ted Kennedy was a true American patriot. He fought for civil rights, decent health care and dignity for all people. He will be deeply missed throughout our state and nation. Senator Kennedy was an optimist, believing that our country's finest chapters are still to be written. May his work remind us of the importance of dedicating ourselves to serving our country."